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Tsingtao (Qingdao) Administrative center of Jiaozhou, a German colony established on the northeastern coast of China in 1897. It was militarily important as the base for their East-Asia Cruiser Squadron. Unlike the other German colonies, Tsingtao was controlled by the Reich Naval Office rather than the Reich Colonial Office. Tsingtao later lost its strategic significance when the Imperial Navy transitioned from war cruisers to a battleship-fleet based doctrine. Still, the 500 km2 protectorate of Jiaozhou (Kiautschou) remained important as the economic and political gateway to the Chinese province of Shantung (Shandong). In 1914 Jiaozhou had 190,000 inhabitants, including 4,300 Europeans, guarded by a protection force of 2,600 men. The very founding of the naval base invited tensions with the Japanese. Aspiring to become the dominant power in East Asia, Japan was interested in this same location. Several additional factors further damaged German-Japanese relations. Fir…

German East Africa Situated on the coast of the Indian Ocean, between Portuguese Mozambique to the south, British East Africa to the north, and the Belgian Congo to the west, German East Africa comprised the modern states of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. Declared a territory of the German Reich in 1885, with 7.5 million inhabitants the country was the most populous German colony, and at 995,000 km2 also the largest. Some 5,300 Europeans lived in the colony in 1914. The British government decided to capture German East Africa as early as August 1914. As with the other German colonies, strategic aims were paramount. Occupation of the ports of Tanga and Dar es Salaam, and the destruction of the wireless stations at Dar es Salaam, Bukoba, and Mwanza, would deny bases and c…

Sub-Saharan Africa Africa without the Arab North, and without the settler colonies in the South. Sub-Saharan Africa was both a theater of war and a source for the recruitment of soldiers and laborers during the First World War. The main areas fought over were the German colonies of Togo, Cameroon, and German East Africa, as their ca…